Guarded Girls
Awards
- Winner, Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play 2019
- Nominated, Governor General's Literary Award 2020
Description
The stories and experiences of three imprisoned women and a guard intertwine in dramatic and dangerous ways, as the psychological destruction that is solitary confinement taunts each of their lives.
Nineteen-year-old Sid is transferred to a new prison, finding friendship with her cellmate Brit, but she also forms a complicated relationship with a guard who seems to be watching their every move. In another time, an older inmate named Kit talks to an unseen audience about a coming visitor and how she’ll stop at nothing to see them, even if that means bringing down the entire prison system. In another place, three girls wait as visitors, each one thinking about the complicated positions their mothers are in.
Playful and mysterious, Guarded Girls is about the stories we tell to survive, and how the same stories can also destroy us.
Reviews
“Corbeil-Coleman is an extremely talented writer; her dialogue sparkles, and her characters feel well-rounded and human.”
- Ilana Lucas, Mooney on Theatre
“The whole play might seem disorienting, but the story is worth the ride.”
- Carly Maga, Toronto Star
“Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman is an intriguing playwright, and perhaps her greatest gift is unpredictability.”
- Paula Citron, Ludwig Van
“Corbeil-Coleman’s dialogue is quick, cutting, and refreshingly funny even as her play is pitch black.”
- Kelly Bedard, My Entertainment World
“ . . . the piece builds spectacularly, touching on issues of trauma and the cycle of violence without any gratuitous content and without exploiting the women Corbeil-Coleman listened to so carefully in preparation.”
- Susan G. Cole, NOW Magazine
“Artful and disturbing.”
- Martin Morrow, The Globe and Mail